Keflings Prepare to Take Over Candy Mountain

If you haven’t listened to our latest Marooners’ Talk podcast, you should. Why? Because we got to sit down with Andrew Hill of NinjaBee Games, where we discussed the upcoming A World of Keflings DLC and much more.

Both Keflings games on Xbox Live are absolutely fantastic, and we definitely have the articles to support that statement. Should you be unfamiliar with the series, A Kingdom for Keflings and A World of Keflings take your Xbox Live avatar and puts them into the game. By chopping, mining, shearing, and building, you help the Keflings with various tasks, and you do it all to a whimsical tune.

Coming soon is the latest DLC for A World of Keflings, and it involves sugary treats guaranteed to make your wildest Willy Wonka fantasies come true. Originally nicknamed “Candy for Keflings,” we can exclusively share that it will be called, “Sugar, Spice, and Not So Nice.” Sounds pretty foreboding, right? That’s because it is. For the first time in Keflings history, we’ll be getting a villain: Waldorf the Wizard. Say it with me now…WIIIZZAARRRDD!!! While we don’t know too much about Waldorf, we do know that he will have a henchman named Augustus, who may or may not have been inspired by a certain child who entered a certain chocolate factory.

In “Sugar, Spice, and Not So Nice,” we’ll be essentially taken to what I’ll call, for the purposes of this article, Candy Mountain. No, there won’t be any unicorns named Charlie, as far as I know, but it sounds positively delicious. Everything will be made of candy, and you’ll be able to harvest it all. Chocolate from a chocolate volcano, caramel from a caramel lake, and sugar from a cotton candy forest. You’ll even be able to harvest pink frosting from little sprinkled animal cracker sheep, like the kind you find in the grocery store.

While playing Akimi Village, a NinjaBee title exclusive to PSN, we loved how buildings shared inventory, thus reducing the amount number of trips one had to take in order to process materials. In this new DLC there will be a building known as the Bakery. While it won’t be able to do everything, it’ll perform your essential material upgrading all under one roof. For example, if the Bakery were in A World of Keflings right now, one could take freshly chopped wood and place it in there only to then create wooden planks as well as carved wood. By making everything more streamlined it helps reduce any potential frustration, even though the Keflings games are ridiculously relaxing. There will still be other workshops to build, of course, so don’t think they’re letting you all off so easily!

One thing I personally loved about A World of Keflings was the availability of helpful builders, consisting of Doug Kefling and his brothers and sister. That will carry over into Sugar and Spice, but with new characters. One resembles a diminutive orange creature (no, not Snooki) from a certain aforementioned chocolate factory, and another, which I personally can’t wait to see, is a bear riding a unicycle that thinks it’s a gumdrop (the bear, not the unicycle). And no, I’m not making that up. We were also told that there will be those fantastic pop culture references that we’ve all grown to love from NinjaBee, as well as a fantastic new soundtrack that will fit right on in with the decor.

Unfortunately we weren’t able to get a release date for this delectable DLC, but what we did learn from Andrew is that it’ll be right on the heels of the upcoming Xbox Live Avatar FameStar update. That’s expected to hit consoles this week, so the DLC shouldn’t be too far behind. Since the DLC, as well as A World of Keflings, will make use of the FameStar feature, it unfortunately had to wait. But fret not, eager fans! With FameStar, not only will you get a new kingdom to build your way through (which is more like a new map of the main campaign with some sandbox-style gameplay but not as much story), you’ll also get new, weekly quests for a full calendar year. Each completed quest will come with its own in-game reward, giving you a total of 51 goodies to get. Make sure you stay on top of it, though, because if you miss a week you’ll have to wait until it comes back around again the following year.

If all of this awesome news isn’t enough, know that there will be some bugs fixed, avatar items will be supported, more emotes will be included (with one being tied to a Twisted Pixel title), and in the actual DLC there will be a shout-out to Ms. Splosion Man. Sadly, NinjaBee won’t be attending PAX Prime next month, however they have plans to be at both 2013 PAX events as well as E3 2013 with a ton of news and new stuff to reveal. And who knows…. based on what was said during the podcast, it sounds like we may be getting more Keflings-related goodies before then.

You can check out our latest Marooners’ Talk podcast, which contains way more information than my excited brain was able to handle, here. Additionally, thanks to our good friends at NinjaBee Games, we’re giving away some A World of Keflings and It Came From Outer Space DLC combo packs right now so enter today!